Catfish Have Learned How To Hunt Pigeons

European Catfish have developed a taste for pigeon. The 1.5 meter
long fish — the largest in the continent — lunge out of the water
to grab the feathery feast.

They are temporarily stranded on the gravel shore when they
attack the pigeons, risking death for a meal. The finding was
published yesterday, Dec. 5, in
the journal PLoS ONE.

Ed Yong over at Discover's blog Not Exactly Rocket Science talked
to Julien Cucherousset from Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse
about
the strange fish behaviors:

Alerted to the fishes’ behaviour by local fishermen, Cucherousset
watched them from a bridge overlooking the island. Over the
summer of 2011, he filmed 54 attacks, of which 28 percent were
successful.

Catfish get their name for the long, sensitive whiskers (or
‘barbels’) on their upper jaws, and the Tarn fishes would erect
theirs when they were hunting pigeons. This, combined with the
fact that only moving pigeons were ever attacked, suggests that
the fish are sensing the vibrations of birds that approached the
water.